Jeffrey MacDonald, Innocence, and the Future of Habeas Corpus

Harvey Silverglate
, ContributorI write about injustices in the justice system.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Jeffrey MacDonald

Inherent in any human endeavor is the possibility of error. In few arenas is this axiom more consequential—or more steadfastly ignored—than in the criminal justice system.

The week of September 17th, the Wilmington, NC, federal district court held a long-awaited evidentiary hearing in the case of Jeffrey MacDonald. This murder case, which occasionally has dominated (and of late has returned to) theheadlines, offers a chilling reminder of the importance of accuracy over thefinality of criminal verdicts when weighing innocence claims of the convicted. Inseeking to balance the supposed necessity of finality against the obvious need to protect the innocent from all-too-frequent errors, the case probes the viability and scope of the constitutionally-protected writ of habeas corpus, the procedural device for reviewing otherwise final judgments based on newly-discovered evidence.

This ancient legal right is deemed by scholars to be the single most important right inherited from the ancient Anglo-Saxon legal system and incorporated into the Constitution. Yet controversy has long swirled around habeas corpus on the question of whether it is aimed at assuring only that certain procedures be followed, or whether a case can be revisited, years or even decades later, if evidence arises that a convict turns out to be demonstrably innocent.

The MacDonald case puts front-and-center the pivotal question of whether the writ of habeas corpus should be available to the convicted, regardless of how many times a defendant has unsuccessfully attacked his conviction in the past. But this gets us ahead of the remarkable story of this case.

In 1970, the two young daughters and pregnant wife of Dr. Jeffrey R. MacDonald, an army physician stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were murdered. Such brutal slayings pock-marked an era of unparalleled tumult—a half year after the Manson Family murders, and two months after Altamont, at which four concert-goers died, the MacDonald murders underscored innocence lost.

It is perhaps for this reason that fascination surrounded the case. It didn’t hurt that the prime suspect—JeffreyMacDonald himself—was a Princeton-educated Green Beret. Though badly injured, he survived. Could he have perpetrated the killings, and orchestrated an elaborate cover-up in which he even stabbed himself within less than an inch of his heart?

MacDonald told investigators that four drugged-out intruders,three men and one woman, invaded his home, beat him unconscious, and murdered his family. To this day, he has stuck unwaveringly to this account.

Early on, MacDonald’s version of events was lent credence when an Army judicial officer found no credible evidence to bring formal charges against him. Though tasked only with determining whether cause existed to bring the case to a formalcourt martial, the officer went one step further: he declared the allegations “not true” and recommended that civilian authorities investigate Helena Stoeckley, a possible suspect who fit MacDonald’s description of the female intruder. Importantly, immediately after MacDonald, seriously injured and woozy, phoned for emergency assistance, a military policeman speeding to the scene spotted a woman with long blond hair and a distinctive floppy hat standing in the rain on a streetcorner near the MacDonald home. The MP’s description of this womanvery much lined up withMacDonald’s description of the female intruder, even though neither MacDonald nor the MP had heard the other’s description of her.

After MacDonald left the Army, U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors picked up the case, ignoring the Army investigator’s advice and instead focusing on MacDonald as their prime suspect. Nearly five years after his family was killed, MacDonald was indicted for murder. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted in July 1979 and sentenced to consecutive life sentences. Over the years the case became notorious for the mountain of evidence that the jurors did not hear.

It wasn’t long thereafter that a best-selling book by author Joe McGinniss, Fatal Vision, and a made-for-TV movie by the same name cemented MacDonald’s guilt in the publicand judicial eye. His repeated attempts to have courts look anew at his conviction were, until recently, for naught.

This has been due to the doctrine of “finality” of criminal judgments. In the early 1990s, efforts to end post-verdict attacks on findings of guilt blossomed in all three branches of the federal government. In 1991, just days before my colleagues and I were to file a brief seeking a new trial for MacDonald, the Supreme Court, in McCleskey v. Zant, raised the bar for habeas corpuspetitions. Despite accumulating evidence implicating Stoeckley and exonerating MacDonald, ourpetition, a federal district court ruled in 1991, did not overcome the heavy burden that suddenly favored finality.